At least 18 human bodies were found burned in a forest in Greece’s Thadiya National Park near the Turkish border. It was reported by Greek firefighters, according to local residents server Vima believes they are immigrants.
“The possibility of their illegal entry into the country is being investigated,” the Greek fire department representative Giannis Artofioros wrote on the website. The 18 dead were reportedly found in two groups.
Rescuers are currently searching the area for more victims. They fear more casualties among the migrants. The Evros region, where Thadiya is located, often acts as a crossing point for migrants crossing from Turkey to Greece.
Firefighters have been battling the fire at Thadia Park since Monday.
However, wildfires have been raging through Greece all summer, for example in the Boeotia region west of Athens, which is currently raging out of control.
Greece was battling the Rhodes fire last month
Tourists who walked for kilometers in heavy smoke and confusion lost their travel documents. Greece experienced the largest evacuation operation in history due to the wildfires in Rhodes.
Firefighters ordered or recommended the evacuation of tens of thousands of people there on Tuesday, the agency reports AFP. The flames approached Ano Leocia’s neighborhood. In the nearby district of Fili, Greece writes that many houses have already been burnt server Kathimerini. Also, authorities ordered the closure of the main garbage dump in the Athens communal area.
According to an afternoon report by the fire department, there were 65 forest fires in the country on Tuesday. Firefighters extinguished 14 major fires in the evening. According to them, the most serious situation is in Attica, that is, in the area around the capital Athens, in the north-east of the country near the river Evros and the city of Alexandroupoli.
“Weather conditions are extreme,” fire department spokeswoman Janice Artobios said. According to him, the fire took a “huge scale” in no time.
According to the agency, officials had to spend the night in the port of Alexandroupoli in northeastern Greece, near the border with Turkey. Reuters About 200 patients, including children and those in the intensive care unit, were evacuated from the hospital there as the fire approached.
Technicians and fire crews from abroad are now going to Greece to help, for example Croatia or Sweden. The Czech Republic is sending a Black Hawk helicopter with aerial firefighting missions, a team of 64 people and 33 emergency and other equipment, ČTK agency recalled.
According to calculations by the daily Kathimerini, the fire destroyed 435 square kilometers of land in Greece between Saturday and Monday, which is comparable to Prague. The largest area is in the north-east of the country.
